Ugali wannabes: how ugali became synonymous with every talk in the country

May was certainly the month that ‘maize’ became the most mentioned word in the country – alongside subsidiary words like ‘unga’ and ‘ugali.’

Things have certainly been ugly since the price of flour hit almost two hundred bob – and I honestly cannot tell you how Luhyas have been surviving (although I do have my spies like Daisy Ingado Binayo beaming me info from that part of the world).

May was also the month we all got to know that Mexico is a top maize exporter to Kenya. Before May, the only three things Mexico had ever exported to Kenya were telenovellas (like ‘Tormenta en el Paraiso’), tequila, and Lupita.

Then came a super-fast ship from Mexico (really, a wannabe water jet) that was roaming the high seas with mountains of cheap ugali below deck, and everything was sorted.

In fact, we are very lucky our wannabe ministers and mandarins of Agriculture just happened to anticipate, then intercept that ship of ugali, as it streaked past the port of Mombasa like a jetski. Had it sailed into Somali waters, the pirates of Kismayu would have grabbed the ugali on board and sold it to al Shaabab, thus giving ‘nguvu’ to those terrorists to continue giving our boys in el Hell a hard time.

But now that the ugali is here, it is time to give y’all wannabe ugali eaters a lesson in table manners.

Once-upon-a-time, there was a presidential candidate called Dida whose good deed wasn’t his ‘do or die’ dash for the presidency, but the homely advice he used to give out – like ninety bob unga – on TV.

This wannabe president said: ‘When you eat githeri, it is better to leave some room for water in your stomach.’ In other words, don’t just increase your girth with gith!

Ditto with ugali.

Don’t serve yourself a globule of ugali on the plate so large that your eyes become as wide as flying saucers when you just look at the ugali.

Also, don’t take a lump of ugali so large in your hand that as you mould it into a bolus, you look like Jaro Solja about to fling a boulder after a match that K’Ogalo has lost.

Wash your hands before you eat, please, because cholera has now reached even suburbia like Karen.

Don’t be the wannabe who wants to shake shemeji’s hand just because she happens to pass by in the middle of your meal. Ugali is adhesive, which means it will stick to the hand of the visitor you just greeted with a hearty handshake.

If you see PK on KTN while you are eating your ugali, don’t open your mouth wide like a mbuta to complain: ‘Sasa huyu chewing gum kwa nini anataka kuharibia Sonko kura huku Nairobi?’

After your meal of ugali, don’t belch or indulge in other disgusting post-meal bodily functions publicly.

And if it was a group meal of ugali and nyama you were sharing, say at a nyama choma joint? Don’t be the greedy wannabe out-eating the others by keeping your meat to ugali ratio at 4:1.

Now it is time for strungi tea (because the milk from Mongolia soured on the high seas, although maziwa mala from Malaysia is en route, and should go well with your ugali soon).

If you are a visitor somewhere, don’t be the wannabe that fills your cup of black tea quarter way with sugar, as if you are trying to get diabetes. Remember sugar is still ‘being hoarded’ and so expensive.

(Although I’ve no doubt the State is signing something as we speak that will have a ship with sugar sailing here from Samoa – and that will arrive faster than you can utter the phrase ‘samosa na skari ngutu!’).

Also, don’t sip your tea NOISILY the way some wannabes slurp at porridge in hotelis. That sound just makes someone want to smack your gob.

As for food servers, whether at home or outside, try to take care of the aesthetics of serving food.

Don’t just throw a meal in a messy menagerie onto a plate so that, by the time you serve it, it looks like a macabre massacre – presented on a plate – like the head of John the Baptist.